We read it for a Contemporary American Lit. class in college, and it was amazing.

He shifts points of view often (like, within the same paragraph or within the same sentence), and it took me about 80 pages to get the hang of what he was doing (another person in class wondered if it took Kesey that long to figure out for himeself what he was doing).

Like I said, once you get the hang of the POV shifts, and especially once you come to recognize the different characters' voices, it's not hard to follow - and it's an AMAZING piece of work.

I'll give you an example. First, some background from the back cover of the Penguin edition:

quote:

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The magnificent second novel from the legendary author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Sailor Song is a wild-spirited and hugely powerful tale of an Oregon logging clan. A bitter strike is raging in a small lumber town along the Oregon coast. Bucking that strike out of sheer cussedness are the Stampers: Henry, the fiercely vital and overpowering patriarch; Hank, the son who has spent his life trying to live up to his father; and Viv, who fell in love with Hank's exuberant machismo but now finds it wearing thin. And then there is Leland, Henry's bookish younger son, who returns to his family on a mission of vengeance - and finds himself fulfilling it in ways he never imagined. Out of the Stamper family's rivalries and betrayals ken Kesey has crafted a novel with the mythic impact of Greek tragedy.

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Now, from page 13. This scene involves Mr. Draeger, the man who the union has sent to make the Stampers quit logging during the strike; and Viv, Hank's wife. The italics represent Draeger's thoughts, parenthesis represent Viv's thoughts. He has just come to town and Viv meets him in a restaurant. Chronologically, this is the last scene in the novel, but it opens and closes the book. You can think of it like most of the story is told in flashback, or you can say the opening scene and the closing scene frame the novel, since the last scene finishes the first.

Notice in the excerpt, there's no narration at all, only conversation and thoughts:

quote:

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"Not at all Mr. Draeger. Look." (Every danged winter . . .) "Let me leaf through a bit of the Stamper family past . . ." Giddy b----, the past has nothing to do--"For instance, here, 1909, let me read you"--with the ways of men today. "'During the summer the red tide came in and turned the clams bad; killed a dozen injuns and three of us Christians.' Fancy that, Mr. Dreager." The days are the same, though, damn it (days that you feel like pages of soft wet sandpaper in your fingers, the silent pliant teeth of time eating away); the summers are the same. "Or . . . let's see . . . here: the winter of 1914 when the river froze solid." The winters are the same too. (every winter mildew, and skin rash, and fever blisters on your lip). "And you must go through one of these winters to have some notion. Are you listening Mr. Draeger?"

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Did you put in the italics and parentheses? I'm assuming they were like that in the book or you would not know who was talking, necessarily.

Guaranteed I won't break the rules THAT way...

Brain-stem cramp.

The movie pretty much takes a nasty turn south after the urine drinking bit.

Let's just say that the whole film made me want to drink MY own urine. Word of advice, if it looks like a stupid premise, and it sounds like a stupid premise; it's a stupid premise.

It's the same reason I refused to go watch Kangaroo Jack.

But then, people seemed to actually like that movie. I woudln't know...